*spoiler-free*
After absolutely loving the Heartstopper series, I was so excited when I saw that Alice Oseman had published two novellas (This Winter and Nick and Charlie) from the Solitaire and Heartstopper universe. These novellas use a mixture of text and graphics to tell the story.
This Winter is set after Heartstopper Volume 4, where we see that Charlie has been suffering a lot from mental health issues which have affected his whole life. This novella focuses on the Christmas period following this and how difficult it is to navigate traditionally happy events when the rest of your life is still the same.
What I really enjoyed about this was the variety of different perspectives we saw the story through such as Charlie, Tori, and Oliver. It was nice to see more of the sibling relationships among the family drama. It was also refreshing to enjoy the story through Oseman’s writing as the normal Heartstopper books are pure graphic novels. This made This Winter a quick and easy read.
My only slight disappointment was that about a quarter of the novella is an extract from Solitaire (which I’ve just finished reading!) so I wished the story was longer, but nonetheless, I still enjoyed it.
4/5 stars
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